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Hey, cmmon, just because I off the link for several days does mean nothing. You don't seat here all day either.

Originally Posted by elanthis

That at least I can agree 100% on with you. Openness is irrelevant if the software is shit. A free product that doesn't do what you need is worthless while an expensive patented proprietary product that does everything you need may even be priceless (depending on how much you need that functionality -- medical software that saves my life, for instance, is not something I'd demand a Free version of before I let the doctors use it).

Just because you agree with me, does not mean I agree with the conclusion or justification you build on it.

While people do care much more about present, but breaking(!), patented, uncorrectable, closed-down, very possibly monopole, unmodifiable commercial proprietary solution; they will opt in for opensource commercial solution if it matches in performance.

When you start talking about consumables or even medical - please hold proprietary software from there.
Why?
Because 85% of illness cases in America is due to bullshit food. The food that is grown on closed down recipes and people simply get ill from it, but its all masked. Palm oil, transgenfat, genetically modified mais, rice, soy, vegetables, seeds that do not reproduce in plants & at same time damage the normal seeds, animals feed by ridiculously crazy amount of antibiotics - so they survive is extremely bactericide hostile and dirty farms, animals becoming food from the rests of their own kind, mixed with grow hormones. When a person eats such meat its gonna super-size in next 3 years regardless of how it cares about himself. Why? Because its all closed source! No one can traceback whats really inside! No one can really check what they are consuming. No one can visit the factory. No one can trust in formula, even if its given - the formula of subcomponents is masked. Have you seen food with soy? Yes, because cancer-provoking genetically modified soy is cheap as dirt - you throw 1% of meat and 99% of soy and you get "meal". But it does not look like meat, nor tastes like meat! Throw cancer-provoking color agents and cancer-provoking glutamate and you get a deal! 5% of people will land with allergy from such meal, 20% of people will get cancer in 10 years because of this meal and the rest will have their internal organs trashed (even more). But industry does not care, because its under the error-rate and it makes profit FOR THEM. Why? Because "the glass" is smoked.

But wait there is more! What about aluminum and mercury used as preservatives for bacteria and viruses (grown on dead biomass) for inoculation of born babies???? With the fact that no active-type inoculation has EVER helped against infection - if you remove the supportive tests that were payed (AND OWNED) by pharmacy industry itself?! A lot of babies (hundred thousands on Europe scale) DIE yearly because of inoculation that is nor proven neither its components are tracked and open to everyone.

You really want to handle your life to windows machine? I wish you luck, cause I will not.

Originally Posted by elanthis

This part is silly. Nothing needs to be patented to make a profit. Especially not video drivers. AMD/NVIDIA/Intel do not sell drivers. They sell hardware. The drivers are produced because without them the hardware is useless. If software patents were abolished today, nothing would really change in their development cycles for their drivers. If proprietary/closed software were made illegal today, nothing would really change in their development cycles for their drivers (other than that they'd probably rapidly improve by cross-proliferation of previously closed tech and bug fixes from users).

This is not happening, because they do not want it and are not interested. See previous response - until consumers DEMAND it and they can only DEMAND if the PRODUCT with such quality is on the MARKET(See bio food program in Germany).
They do not want, because they fear competition(where competition and themself already disasm and steal from each other), because they fear to more advanced systems emerge due to no lobby possible - systems that invest the money RIGHT into their development, systems that have nothing to cover because you require exact same amount of HEAVY work to achieve it, and not into hidden corporate money cases.

Originally Posted by elanthis

NVIDIA has an incentive for that, of course. Somebody somewhere is buying a lot of NVIDIA hardware and demanding Linux support for it. Hollywood, possibly, or perhaps the military, or maybe some of the geographical firms (oil companies and the like).

Nvidia is extremely smart company - it has exterminated or consumed all opposition in Taiwain. It has planned and invested in Linux drivers nearly from the start - because they saw the possibility their and occupied the land piece prior the house built upon it. N1 chinese supercomputer is powered by nvidia tesla now AND LINUX. And it has nothing to do with Nvidia preseen its driver is used for this task, because they WOULD CUT ALL 3D from it and supply it only DIRECTLY with government/mass contracts! And AMD has all focus on WINDOWS. Because if Catalyst/FGLRX behaved same on FireGL in Linux workstation (namely breaking and freezing) they will barely sell several cards there. This is what I wonder - have AMD actually bugtested the quality of driver they offer even ONCE? It was in 2009, I dont know about now, even if I own HD4770(same as you). Why? Because I got enough with HD4670! I just sold it next day and put 9800GT inside. Which I sold again in 2010 and replaced with HD4770 as opensource drivers started to show ... something primitive. But it was ok, because I really thought AMD means it seriously with opensource and it WILL be the driver I wish to pay with my money by buying new AMD cards or paying developers additionally - AS SUPPORTIVE and NOT primary role. Because primary role is SELLING cards. Because if I buy AMD card I pay windows driver! And I JUST MUST spend another almost equal amount of money additionally on linux team to even KEEP THEM on equal development state! You ask about fglrx? Its only payed via those purchasing FireGL! You buy not FireGL - you support windows. WHY AM I PAYING FOR TECHNOLOGY I DO NOT WANT?

Originally Posted by elanthis

Intel's hardware is simplistic. The fact that their Linux drivers don't already match their Windows counterparts is more proof of how little attention Intel is paying to Linux. (I of course know very little of the specifics and could be talking out of my ass here; I'm making a barely-educated guess and opinion on this.)

Intel has only started producing integrated GPU units. They are simplistic, but they are designed to be so. And the drivers with recent patches behave VERY acceptable for the hardware itself. An exception? Maybe. But it proves one single important thing - it is NOT linux that prevents graphics speed. It is NOT xorg. It is DRIVERS. And who is behind the drivers? Those whom you pay money when you purchase next graphic solution.

Originally Posted by elanthis

New GPUs are not anyone's main source of income. Just like new hot CPUs are not anyone's main source of income. Those big expensive over-priced super-powered components are marketing ploys. The sales figures for $300+ GPUs are tiny. The sales figures for $500+ CPUs are tiny. Those products are released so that benchmarks come out saying "OMG NVIDIA has the fastest GPU on the market!" and then Joe Gamer goes to the store and buys the $150

We are not discussing IGP or embedded systems - we discuss desktop with discrete graphics card. Maybe you are very informed - but I see the contrary. Every single person that purchases gfx card spends 100$-300$ on it, with 500$ on enthusiasts or gpgpu people. If it was not so, AMD and nvidia would produce only two discrete card varieties. Or you mean linux has nothing to search on desktop or gaming market? Then go use your windows.

Originally Posted by elanthis

Joe Gamer goes to the store and buys the $150 NVIDIA GPU (because that's all he can afford) instead of the $150 AMD GPU (despite the fact that at the $150 price point, the AMD product may be superior). Likewise for CPUs... before Sandy Bridge, the AMD Phenom II's would out-perform the Intel equivalents at the same price points, even though the higher-priced Intel CPUs trounced the living hell out of AMD's. (Now that Sandy Bridge is out, is even faster than the old i7's, and is ridiculously cheap... I'd be really really worried if I were AMD.)

Joe does this, because he is a fanboy.
And cards are not usable with drivers - good hardware x mediocre driver == mediocre hardware x good driver
You are paying your money to electrical company if your driver performs mediocre.
You could have spend this money into improving the driver, but AMD refuses.

Originally Posted by elanthis

Because it isn't. Almost nobody cares about FOSS. You need actual customers demanding it, not customers who might buy it if the feature is there. That means there needs to be some huge government or industry conglomerate that decides it really really really wants FOSS across the board and needs top-notch GPU support. Until then, Open Source drivers are not interesting to anyone but a relative handful of FSF supporters and nerds.

Yes, Microsoft was successful due to Russia government purchase HUGE amount of windows copies(!!!), because they discovered to burn them for shashlik instead of wood is cheaper to them. -.-

Tip: It is a international crowd of Joes done that in multimedia stores. One Joe may be a fanboy, but 4 billion of Joes are a force to be reckoned with.
Another tip: FSF has nothing major to do with Open Source or Free Software. They are a supportive organization and not command center.
Another tip: Nerdism has nothing to do with OS or license.

Originally Posted by elanthis

NVIDIA's driver is smaller because they keep removing support for old cards. There's actually now three series of NVIDIA's proprietary driver depending on which range of GeForce cards you want supported.

Nvidia removes generation support from certain drivers, but it does not abandon the driver and periodically updates it.

Originally Posted by elanthis

Also, AMD changing up its hardware is a good thing. That's why the AMD hardware is superior to NVIDIA's (even though their drivers do a bang-up job of hiding that fact, often). AMD hardware is smaller, quieter, cooler, cheaper, more efficient, etc. It's all around better. If AMD could steal NVIDIA's driver team, I'd bet my left nut that NVIDIA would go out of business within a few years. (It's a safe bet, we don't want kids anyway )

They should start paying linux team or bind card sells to driver team, otherwise they will not change because they work for money. Regardless of how open the code should be. And good hardware with mediocre driver is so-so hardware.

Originally Posted by elanthis

What? My card seems to work perfectly well on Linux. The rest of Linux on the desktop is complete an utter crap, but the video hardware is working just fine. It's a slightly older card (HD 4770), granted, so maybe you just meant brand new hardware.

Its good to hear that you have spend your time(because the card is rare!) and your money(because it costed more than 4850) to find out that exact 4770 chip that is both 40nm and in R700 generation that is supported by THAT opensource driver, that will never catch up on paar with closed source driver because they do not care much.
Whats working with it? 3D is on OpenGL2 level with a lot of missing parts. There is no video acceleration. No GPGPU. Multimonitor? - I have not tested it yet, but I will. Before I exchange this card to nvidia, because I like buying new working performance hardware that works.
If (amd) opensource driver works as nvidia closed source - this will change things.
Or if (amd) opensource driver is SUPPORTED BY COMPANY so it actually HAS a possibility to achive performance and feature state. And NOT on donations, but on serious support - this will change. And you don't try make another pun out of "serious support" like 0.1% marketshare etc crap, because nvidia already achieved this. Not everywhere, and they are proprietary - and exactly this is the opportunity for concurrence.

Originally Posted by elanthis

But brand new hardware on Linux is always a bad idea.

Wrong again. It works. If driver is released the day card is released there is suddenly good idea. Oh, you must have thought that a crowd of 100 "nerds" should write the driver from scratch for you, instead of the company itself does(just like on windows) and uses crowd for bugfixes and detections to even further improve sales(which windows cannot offer, and which IS the opensource boost)? Look Nvidia does this support for proprietary, HP does this with opensource.

Originally Posted by elanthis

Note that I'm not saying Linux should go with proprietary drivers. I'm 100% fine with Linux going so far as to ban all non-GPL drivers from working, including NVIDIA's.

Oh cmmon, confess you have windows installed somewhere on the drive and you boot there regularly, because YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.

Originally Posted by elanthis

What I'm saying is that it should be possible to distribute a GPL driver that can load up on at least any moderately recent distribution without requiring the user to upgrade to a brand new kernel that's unsupported by the distribution and not packaged up and installed automatically by the distribution.

Distribution server-side automatical package generation already exists and p2p-based distributed binary package pool is already talked about and it may emerge rather soon.
The problem with absence of stable ABI within kernel and this ABI might complicate and slow things down adding extra binary mess to the system(remember DLL hell?), that put - new kernel with new drivers is small price for advantages. Anyway its decision of linux kernel developers, not marketing boys, so it must be correct.

Originally Posted by elanthis

AMD provides support for new hardware. It's just got a lag time. A measurably decreasing lag time. The AMD team has made this clear: they want zero-day wait periods on new hardware support. They're just still playing catch-up. Eventually that catch-up will be done and they'll have the ability to add new hardware support before the hardware comes out. (They're doing this for Fusion in fact, aren't they? Or am I not recalling correctly?)

They are catching up the situation where Nvidia was years already. This is good, but in the end you will have to use their proprietary driver for any 30$+ hardware. This change nothing, cause you already can use(buy) nvidia. There is no serious advantage for AMD.

Originally Posted by elanthis

Don't be silly. They already do that. You buy their hardware or you don't. If you don't buy it, tell them why not. If you do buy it, you're telling them they're doing it right.

"Hm.. So you purchased our hardware?.. For linux?.. Fglrx, no?.. No, opensource you say, heh...Hm, ok.. Sorry but Im a little busy now with windows driver, so call me later, will ya? thx"

Originally Posted by elanthis

Impossible without destroying the patents (preferably all software patents). OpenGL is an interface to hardware. If you remove those features from OpenGL then OpenGL becomes useless.

A match! No? Ahaha, buy more windows supporting hardware, buy more windows copies(!!!), buy more windows games, go support your destiny! And even if there is a billiard crowd of sheep, those are still sheep.

We spend our time arguing and talking, but the result is someone paying money somewhere and something being implemented for that reason. That is what matters, right? Now look here:
1.

Originally Posted by drag

Personally I don't give a shit about proprietary drivers or not. I won't use proprietary drivers if I can help it. END OF STORY.

2.

Originally Posted by drag

I AM NOT going to rely on proprietary drivers just to be able to use my processors.

He is going to rely on driver that are usable. If there are two usable drivers, he will BUY the hardware from the manufacturer using opensource drivers. Obvious, no? Put it on the Retail box.

Not saying it can't happen, or won't happen, but it's going to take an awful lot more than just sitting around waiting for it to happen like most people did for the other Linux drivers. Graphics needs more manpower. A LOT more.

1st obvious possibility.

We must hire whole China to work for our drivers ON FREE basis! (They are actually been doing this already, but its another story)

2nd possible:

We must purchase products that guarantee our money land on opensource development by THEIR crew (+ a bit of our input, + a bit of other opensource company input).

Human work ALWAYS costs money, which is FINE and which is NOT RELATED to proprietary.

I'm stating the obvious things:
1. to have decent result from humans you have to put there money.
2. to make money work an efficient and clean mechanism should be organized.
3. those who support this should really stand behind their words and not claim one thing and in reality pay for another.
4. the whole model should be overseen and a crowd of Joes will not make it. Nor government will save you. You should save yourself - isn't this something repeated since pharaoh age?

Originally Posted by drag

Cheese is nutz.

I think both "Crazynutz" and "Cheesenutz" are free to take, so feel free ..
My nick is still "Crazycheese" and comes from "yumminess" of 10year Gouda(if it interests you). So really, crazy tasty cheese.